Paying Attention to Internal Conflicts: How to use Complicated and Contradictory Feelings in Creative Writing

From Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be,” to Katniss Everdeen’s conflict between the reluctance to kill and the wish to be a warrior in The Hunger Games, internal conflict has stoked the bonfires of creative expression.

What are your own internal conflicts? How might complicated and conflicting feelings inform your own writing? In this two-hour workshop, we will examine examples of internal conflict in literature. This examination will form the basis for exercises in which you will investigate your own internal conflicts or those of your subjects and use them to create short scenes or stanzas.